film festival


This year ’s UK Jewish Fi lm Fest ival has a par t icular ly st rong Israel i element JUDI HERMAN sees two f i lms and gives a round-up of others (over leaf )


IntImate GRammaR Dir: nir BergMAn, 110 mins


I have not read David Grossman’s book, but on the showing of this slightly surreal and elegiac hymn to childhood imagination in the young State of Israel, I look forward to reading it as soon as I can. The story begins in 1963, when its


young heroAaron is eleven, and continues into 1965, his barmitzvah year, by which unaccountably he hasn’t grown an inch. He’s a bright, dreamy boy, ready for infatuation with his artistic new neighbour, the piano- playingMiss Blum, and his pretty ballet-dancing classmate. Boys will be boys though andAaron roams the hills near his Haifa home with hismates, failing to perfect Houdini-inspired escapology stunts. He fails to escape the strictures of home life in a street where the apartments lean together like the gossiping neighbours who occupy them. Here everyone knows your business and given the volume at which hismotor- mouthedmother conducts hers, it would be hard not to overhear.Aaron is constantly let down and shown up by his coarse,


overbearingmumand his downtrodden dad. He’s got a supportive sister though and both siblings love their sad old grandmother, despite the dementia that infuriates her scarily insensitive daughter-in-law. This is the dramatis personae of a story


that reflects the time and place of its setting. These Israelis still feel the pressure of the Holocaust without the escape valve of telling the story. It’s a shock for a 21st-century audience, used to revering elderly survivors, to see survivors in the prime of life, for whomit’s not an acceptable topic of conversation. They are almost ashamed, tainted by it. The State of Israel is young and presents as full of confidence. There are fireworks for Independence Day, but the perils of life where national service counts among everyone’s rites of passage are a constant backgroundmotif. SoAaron escapes into himself, his


imagination – and his love of grammar, English grammar with seductive complexities to which Hebrew cannot aspire – like the present continuous tense, “I am playing, I amjumping”, where you can hide all day and dreamall night. Nir Bergman’s award-winning filmis a


life-saving sustainable technology to the Palestinian Bedouin displaced fromthe village of Susia by the double whammy of incoming settlers and the discovery of an archaeological site beneath their feet. This documentary, seen on Israeli TV,


the human tuRbIne Dir: DAnny verete, 52 mins


“I don’t want to be part of the conflict; I want to be part of the solution,” declares Noam, an aptly named (Noamis Hebrew for pleasant) charismaticmember of Kibbutz Shoval. He’s one of a group of kibbutzniks who dedicatemuch of their lives to bringing


is a superb example of the readiness of Israeli filmmakers to engage with ‘the situation’ and give a voice to Palestinians and others whose lives are currently impoverished and endangered. It would make uncomfortable viewing for Israelis and diaspora Jews if it were not following the indefatigable kibbutzniks championing the villagers’ cause through sheer hard work and making and cementing real close ties with them. The kibbutzniks themselves are the


eponymous Human Turbine. It’s hard not to warmto sexagenarian Noamand dedicated colleagues likeArella, with her flowing white hair and ready smile and embrace. They build up warmand loving relationships


with the villagers, to whomdirector Danny Verete also gives full voice to air their very real grievances. Their lives are tough enough without having to run the gauntlet of settlers armed with stones just to get to school (the kibbutzniks solve that one by laying on a bus) and having to take a 40-minute detour because the road is closed by a police barrier. Even digging wells is problematic because it’s illegal. Verete vividly documents the harshness


of daily life where precious goatsmilk is thrown away for lack of electricity to run a fridge and the goats themselves go hungry. Without electricity it’s hard to study once it’s dark and talented teenagers can only dream of getting to college or starting their own businesses. So the installation of a huge wind


turbine is truly a life-changing achievement and worthy of applause not just fromthe villagers and the kibbutzniks, but also the cinema audience!


JeWish renAissAnce octoBer 2011 39


gently surreal journey fromchildhood to teenage, using all the power of filmto take its audience with it. Lovely evocation of periodmakes its dreamsequences even moremagical. There are ravishing images – Aaron ‘sees’his ballet dancer reflected in a car’s wingmirror, pirouetting in the desert; and frankly crazy scenes – his handyman father is seduced into knocking through rooms inMiss Blum’s flat until there’smore holes than walls. Ultimately the elegy turns melancholic…is the ending real or surreal? Go and see Intimate Grammar and decide for yourself!


F i l M


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60